I don't see those things as contrived. Is it really hard to believe that with all the Trek gadgets we've seen that there isn't a device that could alter memories and identities. It was necessary for the story andpersonally I was fine with it.

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This is going to be hard for me to describe, and it's not going to help that I'm currently drunk (I really need to stop posting at 4:30am on Saturday nights), but this episode feels to me like a house of cards which physically exists, but which is impossible to construct.

I told you it wouldn't make sense.

The idea that the Hirogen capture Voyager, find out about holodeck technology, decide to use it for hunting, decide to involve the Voyager crew, they have the technology which makes the crew think they are holodeck characters, the holodecks themselves are expanded to be massive structures... it doesn't feel natural. If the episode had tried to tell this story from the beginning then I don't think Braga and Menosky would have been able to do it, so they jumped ahead to the end of the story and started from there.

I remember being on holiday when these episodes aired so I got a friend to record them and I watched them both at his house when I got back. I remembered liking them at the time, but I was twelve and going through my WWII fascination stage.

I remember being on holiday when these episodes aired so I got a friend to record them and I watched them both at his house when I got back. I remembered liking them at the time, but I was twelve and going through my WWII fascination stage.

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I don't think I ever grew out of mine.

FWIW, my dad, a casual Trekkie who enjoyed DS9, and the movies the most, also liked the Hirogen, a lot, but I remember him commenting that he didn't think they were very smart sometime around "Prey."

My mother's still in the middle of hers. It probably didn't help that for a good chunk of time, she's taught freshmen history, which in our district focused on the twentieth century. For a good long while, she'd spend the better part of a quarter on the subject. Of course, now they've got her teaching post-Reinassance to modern times, so she's got to condense things quite a bit.

Season Two had some pretty great stuff like "Projections", "The Thaw", "Meld", and "Deadlock", a big wad of passably entertaining but underwhelming episodes like "Cold Fire", "The 37s", "Dreadnought", and "Basics", and rotten turkey episodes like "Twisted" and of course the infamous "Threshold".

Season Three had no hole in the head episodes on the same scale of fail as "Threshold", although the poorly conceived "The Q and the Grey" came close, but most of it was more blander and forgettable, however we had highly entertaining two parters in the form of "Future's End" and "Scorpion". "Before & After" was good for a Kes episode, "The Chut" was a good prison episode that would've fit in well on DS9, while "Distant Origins" wasn't so bad and had a decent stab at Aliens of the Week that weren't just blokes with bumpy foreheads and bad hair styles.

Judging by my graphs, I considered season 3 to be overloaded with poor episodes with not enough good episodes to balance things out. Season 2 was more evenly balanced but still underperformed.

The Killing Game, Part 2 (*½)

To put it simply, this episode is just like part one but slightly better. They finally get around to the point of the thing, which is that the commandant guy wants to save his people using the holodeck technology. The rest of the episode is just more fun with alien nazis, and we get Neelix as Klingon too. This is emmy material right here folks.

Sickbay was destroyed in an explosion, corridors are falling apart, the holo-grid was forcefully overloaded across half the ship, crewmembers are being shot and potentially killed at every turn, and apparently the fighting continued for several days after the main events of this episode. I'm looking forward to the follow-up for all this in the next episode.

All the episodes were great, except for "Threshold" and that episode is at least a bit funny. Some real masterpieces, such as "Cold Fire", "Persistence Of Vision", "Basics", "Alliances".

Season 3 had some really good episodes, like "Warlord", "The Swarm", "Darkling" but some bad and mediocre ones like "Blood Fever" and "Macrocosm" as well. Not as good as season 2 and season 1.

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Since when are "Cold Fire", "Persistence of Vision", "Basics" and "Alliances" masterpieces? I consider them all to be middling at best.
Also I don't see how "The Swarm" or "Darkling" were really good, I do think your love of Kes gets in the way of seeing the true quality of an episode, just because she is in an episode more surely doesn't mean its a masterpiece no?

^ Well that's your opinion and you're entitled to it just as those who prefer Season 2 are entitled to theirs. Great episodes I would add to your short list though are "Resistance", "Death Wish" and "Meld" among others.

To put it simply, this episode is just like part one but slightly better. They finally get around to the point of the thing, which is that the commandant guy wants to save his people using the holodeck technology. The rest of the episode is just more fun with alien nazis, and we get Neelix as Klingon too. This is emmy material right here folks.

This episode definitely had more meat and less potatoes. But I still like the potatoes, just not as much as the meat. Cool Nazi set pieces can only get you so far. (BTW, I did like J. Paul Boehmer's performance as a holo-Nazi. Good actor, that guy.)

Sickbay was destroyed in an explosion, corridors are falling apart, the holo-grid was forcefully overloaded across half the ship, crewmembers are being shot and potentially killed at every turn, and apparently the fighting continued for several days after the main events of this episode. I'm looking forward to the follow-up for all this in the next episode.

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"See for yourself the quintessential devil in these matters..."

This was the big sticking point for me. Okay, so Voyager, with only minimal resources that they can barely run the hologrid and replicators at times, is converted by a few members of a non-technophile race (and yeah, I know that might be debatable and I know they had Harry's help) into a giant holodeck, cutting through bulkheads and compromising the ship's systems? I mean, they made a big deal over trying to install holoprojectors through the ship for the Doc in earlier eps! And sickbay was fraking destroyed! Obliterated!

Voyager should be utterly wrecked and useless in the next episode, since there was no reset button at the end a la "Year of Hell."

(Hey, GB, wanna share a twelve-pack on the next one? I think we may need it.)

Judging by my graphs, I considered season 3 to be overloaded with poor episodes with not enough good episodes to balance things out. Season 2 was more evenly balanced but still underperformed.

The Killing Game, Part 2 (*½)

To put it simply, this episode is just like part one but slightly better. They finally get around to the point of the thing, which is that the commandant guy wants to save his people using the holodeck technology. The rest of the episode is just more fun with alien nazis, and we get Neelix as Klingon too. This is emmy material right here folks.

Sickbay was destroyed in an explosion, corridors are falling apart, the holo-grid was forcefully overloaded across half the ship, crewmembers are being shot and potentially killed at every turn, and apparently the fighting continued for several days after the main events of this episode. I'm looking forward to the follow-up for all this in the next episode.

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GodBen, the next episode is amazing! It will open up with Voyager sitting in an alien shipyard undergoing repairs. Torres will be complaining about the difficulty of incorporating so much alien tech into a Starfleet ship. There is a wonderful little scene between Ken Shmully and Joe Carey as the Doc gives him all sorts of "helpful" suggestions about ways to improve the new sickbay design. There is also a subplot with Neelix and Janeway discussing the cost of the repairs with the dockyard administrator and Janeway wondering how to cope with the fact that they have no money. She'll be forced to confront her aversion to sharing starfleet tech for necessary services. Janeway and Chuckles will have a heart to heart about what to do about all the crew they lost to the Hirogen, and Janeway will have a dramatic breakdown when Lt. Torres informs her that the shuttle-o-matic was irreparably dammaged but they were able to trade it with the aliens to help pay for the ship's repairs.

Klingon Janeway was the big WTF beginning of the first part. As for Klingon Neelix, he made absolutely no sense because he still looked like a Talaxian but with head ridges. I mean, what the hell? A half-magic holodeck?

GodBen, the next episode is amazing! It will open up with Voyager sitting in an alien shipyard undergoing repairs. Torres will be complaining about the difficulty of incorporating so much alien tech into a Starfleet ship. There is a wonderful little scene between Ken Shmully and Joe Carey as the Doc gives him all sorts of "helpful" suggestions about ways to improve the new sickbay design. There is also a subplot with Neelix and Janeway discussing the cost of the repairs with the dockyard administrator and Janeway wondering how to cope with the fact that they have no money. She'll be forced to confront her aversion to sharing starfleet tech for necessary services. Janeway and Chuckles will have a heart to heart about what to do about all the crew they lost to the Hirogen, and Janeway will have a dramatic breakdown when Lt. Torres informs her that the shuttle-o-matic was irreparably dammaged but they were able to trade it with the aliens to help pay for the ship's repairs.

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Sounds great! And here I was thinking that it was going to be a pointless body-snatcher episode.